Diane Ravitch: The Common Core Standards “should have no legitimacy”

The reason to oppose the Common Core standards is because they violate the well-established and internationally recognized process for setting standards in a way that is transparent, that recognizes the expertise of those who must implement them, that builds on the consensus of concerned parties, and that permits appeal and revision.

Across the nation, parents and educators are raising objections to the Common Core standards, and many states are reconsidering whether to abandon them as well as the federally-funded tests that accompany them. Arne Duncan, Jeb Bush, Bill Gates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Business Roundtable vocally support them, yet the unease continues and pushback remains intense.

Why so much controversy?

The complaints are coming from all sides: from Tea Party activists who worry about a federal takeover of education and from educators, parents, and progressives who believe that the Common Core will standardize instruction and eliminate creativity in their classrooms.

But there is a more compelling reason to object to the Common Core standards.

They were written in a manner that violates the nationally and international recognized process for writing standards. The process by which they were created was so fundamentally flawed that these “standards” should have no legitimacy.

Setting national academic standards is not something done in stealth by a small group of people, funded by one source, and imposed by the lure of a federal grant in a time of austerity.

There is a recognized protocol for writing standards, and the Common Core standards failed to comply with that protocol.

On its website ANSI describes how standards should be developed in every field. The American National Standards Institute

“has served in its capacity as administrator and coordinator of the United States private sector voluntary standardization system for more than 90 years. Founded in 1918 by five engineering societies and three government agencies, the Institute remains a private, nonprofit membership organization supported by a diverse constituency of private and public sector organizations.”

“Throughout its history, ANSI has maintained as its primary goal the enhancement of global competitiveness of U.S. business and the American quality of life by promoting and facilitating voluntary consensus standards and conformity assessment systems and promoting their integrity. The Institute represents the interests of its nearly 1,000 company, organization, government agency, institutional and international members through its office in New York City, and its headquarters in Washington, D.C.”

ANSI’s fundamental principles of standard-setting are transparency, balance, consensus, and due process, including a right to appeal by interested parties. According to ANSI, there are currently more than 10,000 American national standards, covering a broad range of activities.

The Common Core standards were not written in conformity with the ANSI standard-setting process that is broadly recognized across every field of endeavor.

If the Common Core standards applied to ANSI for recognition, they would be rejected because the process of writing the standards was so deeply flawed and did not adhere to the “ANSI Essential Requirements.”

The way I see it is the same. There was never any buy-in by educators, parents of students, in fact, we were all kept in the dark about what the standards were to be. Gates bought the teachers’ unions and they went along with the Common Core Standards, that was the buy-in.

I don’t think anyone except Arne Duncan, Bill Gates and the test meisters knew what we were in for in terms of assessments when states signed onto the Common Core Standards. No one knew the amount of student information that was to be turned over to data banks without the knowledge of or approval by parents.

The way this was all done is typical Gates. Think about how he pushed software into computers to the point where anti-trust laws were broken. He pushed software onto users by way of having software pre-loaded into the computers. No transparency and no choice in the matter by consumers.

2.5 million children in the US live in poverty

To understand what that means to these children and to our country, watch Frontline : Poor Kids

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/poor-kids/

“Poverty is the new slavery.”

Dr. Cornel West

Diane Ravitch

"The crisis in US education is not general and national. It is concentrated where there is poverty and segregation. Testing does not address either problem."

Bill Gates speech to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 2009

"When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better."

Bernie Sanders

This process -- a handful of the wealthiest people in our country controlling the political process -- is called "oligarchy."

The great political struggle we now face is whether the United States retains its democratic heritage or whether we move toward an oligarchic form of society where the real political power rests with a handful of billionaires, not ordinary Americans.

Woody Guthrie

Woody Guthrie, arguably the most revered forerunner of the Greenwich Village scene had a sign taped to his guitar during his time in World War II that read, “This machine kills fascists.” And when he returned to the states when the war was over he decided that the sign was still relevant.

“People would ask him… ‘Hey Woody, Hitler’s dead, why don’t you take the sign off? And he would reply ‘Well this fascism comes around whenever the rich people get the generals to do what they want."

Recommended Reads

Jesse has collected stories from students, educators and parents around the country and formed a picture of what is happening in public education and why:

More Than A Score edited by Jesse Hagopian

This book is a must read to understand what teachers are going through with the corporate takeover of our public school system:

Confessions of a Bad Teacher by John Owens

Need I say more? It's a book by Chris Hedges:

Death of the Liberal Class: Chris Hedges

Dollarocracy: Robert Waterman McChesney

Ravitch lays it out in this book and its no holds barred:

Reign of Error: Diane Ravitch

Want to know where over 50% of each tax dollar is going? Read this book:

The Operators by Michael Hastings

Why is it is hard to tell the difference between the Dems and Repubs? Read this book and find out:

The Party is Over: Mike Lofgren

This is a must read. Naomi Klein breaks it down in this book about how oligarchs are manipulating us and running our world:

The Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein

If you want to know about the financial collapse of 2008, why the rest of us are no better off now and yet the stock market and banks have rebounded, making huge profits and why another collapse is inevitable, check out this book by Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics:

Freefall: America, Free Markets and the Sinking of the World Economy

Danny Weil, 2009

"...charter chains would prefer national standards...
This would allow them to use prepackaged curricula across
their charter outlets no matter the location...for dummied
down standardized curriculum keeps costs down and the
dispensation is formulaic and repetitive. This is the Walmart model of education."

On standardization

"I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture."

Chris Hedges

"Any time hedge fund managers...when they walk into the inner city areas and start talking about poor children's education, it's not because they want kids to read and write, it's because they know that the federal government spends $600B on education and they want it and they're going to get it."

DIANE RAVITCH ON SCHOOL CLOSURES

"It is odd that school leaders feel triumphant when they close schools, as though they were not responsible for them. They enjoy the role of executioner, shirking any responsibility for the schools in their care."

Frederick Douglass

“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”

Chris Hedges

"There is something grotesque about the fact that education reform is being led not by educators but by financiers and speculators and billionaires."